Inside Health

THE EMPIRE ZONE; Statutory Spelling

By MICHAEL M. GRYNBAUM

Published: June 18, 2007

When the Assembly passed a bill last week that legalized the ''medical use of marihuana,'' copy editors across the state did a double take. Shouldn't that be spelled with a ''j'' instead of an ''h''?

''Marijuana'' is standard usage, but ''the public health law and the penal law have always spelled it with an 'h' ,'' explained Assemblyman Richard N. Gottfried, the sponsor of the bill. (The Senate version has not come up for a vote.) ''That's the official New York State statutory spelling.''

The alternate form stretches back decades: Mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia investigated the ''marihuana problem in the city of New York'' and published a report in 1944 ''concerning the smoking of marihuana by large segments of our population and even by school children.''

Even the cannabis cognoscenti were at a loss to explain the change in spelling. ''We haven't really determined a point where the 'h' went to a 'j', '' said Steve Bloom, the former editor of High Times magazine. Mr. Gottfried floated one possibility: ''Someone just spelled it wrong, and it stuck.''